The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Yeah, they accused me of pretending to be a Person of Color. 😉

Thank you, you’re wonderful. I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip the borscht and try the waitresses.

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*You know you’re living some semblance of a free life when you have to stop and look up the spelling of “committee.” 🙂

This is why I like canned meat…

Second Monday in a row the local food market’s meat reefer’s been broken down. I had my mouth set for some roast chicken, but it’s Spam again this week. Fortunately Big Brother restocked me.

They were also out of potatoes. Again. I happened to mutter “how does a food store run out of potatoes?” in the presence of an employee. I got a discourse on how each department has a weekly budget which somehow doesn’t permit the purchase of potatoes, I confess I wasn’t really listening. I dunno – I’m not an economist, but it just seems as if potatoes might be a logical product for a food store to sell all the time, not just for the few minutes after the potato shipment comes in.

See this? This was totally not in the budget.

That’s what I get for being fastidious, for doing normal, ordinary maintenance. Yeah. A slob would not have needed to buy a new waterer.

Calcium scale had really built up on the old waterer, which is only, I dunno, maybe a little over four years old. I had a little left over of the cleaning-strength vinegar I use to clean the toilet bowl, and last night I thought, “I’m planning to buy more vinegar tomorrow, so I should expend everything I have on cleaning this waterer.

Yeah. Probably would have been a better idea last year. This year it turns out the calcium scale was the only thing holding the water in.

There’s a reason nobody around here uses iron water tanks any more.

(grumble) What pisses me off is that I had the money! I had the money because I got paid a finder’s fee for those batteries, right? Which wasn’t even any part of the negotiations, my neighbor just said, “Good job, here you go.” And I thought, I dunno, I’ll see how the insulation and drywall costs go, and then maybe I’ll buy something shiny with the windfall, if I don’t end up spending it on building materials.

And I did. I spent it on something shiny. For the f*cking chickens.

BUT! The morning is not all doom, gloom and dragons eating the sun. I also finished fixing the platform of S&L’s painting scaffold.

Yup! And I got it locked to the scaffold, and I dragged the ladder over and got everything level, and climbed up with no trouble at all, Even ol’ Acrophobe Joel can work on that now. So I’ve lost my last excuse not to start painting again.

Maybe it’ll rain?

…about the efficiency and thoroughness of some people’s thought processes. That’s all.

ETA: Meanwhile, it has been revealed that 90% of America’s neo-nazis live in secret underground bunkers.

Big Brother has always liked waterbeds. He had one in 1970 when I was in high school and lived with him. He has one now.

But alas…

Unsurprisingly, [Big Brother’s wife’s] health has been quite questionable since our trip. Our doctor is amazing. [She] has been coughing for the last couple of weeks. As he tries to figure out why, that fellow has been calling her several times each week to keep track and to offer suggestions. Few doctors answer phone calls from patients, fewer yet PLACE them.

She must sleep sitting up so she can drain, so our cherished homemade 40-year-old water bed finally must go. It is simply too old to learn new tricks. Very expensively, we have ordered a new split “adjustable” bed to replace it. Like a hospital bed, she will have the option of sleeping on a recline, while I will be able to continue to sleep flat as before. Until it arrives, she spends much of each night in a recliner, leaving us separated but at least still in the same premises.

Life goes on.

So it does, given the slightest chance.

Landlady’s schedule got bumped up a week and though I knew these packages were in transit I was so sure they wouldn’t be here this weekend I had already planned to spend money I really can’t afford on wire. But the donated wire has arrived!

A hundred foot coil of braided 12 gauge duplex! I can now finish the 12v wiring. This stuff is expensive, at least it is around here. Also leather bones for LB, some canned meat, and…

That’s the undershelf reading lamp for the new bedroom, which will go over the headboard (on the new/old bedstead, which is also coming sometime next month). Complete with dimmer control, which time will tell how useful that will be but I’m guessing probably lots given the application.

Also, Generous Reader Terrapod sent a bunch of thermostat wire, more than enough to get the furnace’s thermostat over where it belongs, halfway across the room from the new furnace.

And! He threw in some new trailer hold-downs, always extremely useful, AND!

A new Official TUAK camera! Which promptly set out to teach me what an out-of-touch old coot I am: You see that sign on the front that says “Touch Screen?” Well, I didn’t see that. There’s only five buttons on the whole machine, one is the shutter catch and another is on/off which seemed to leave very few buttons to control what would no doubt prove an awful lot of functions. And none of the buttons were rockers. So even when I could persuade the screen to display a menu, how the hell was I to make selections? I actually spent like fifteen minutes on this perplexing question, finally resolving to download a manual.

Then I was playing with the camera on a Ghost run, and I saw that sign. “Touch Screen.” And I remembered that people with smart phones could make them do things by touching or swiping the screen…

And I felt kind of stupid.

Speaking of stupid, while I used my telephone to take the picture of the camera above*, I kept hearing it make “shutter click” noises. Turns out you can take pictures by … touching the screen. Which is one of the dumber functions I can think of, because how do you hold the camera still while you do that? But maybe it has some use I haven’t yet discerned. Kinda meta, though. While I was gazing into the camera lens, it was gazing back into me.

Thanks, guys!

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*Repeat that sentence to yourself over and over in a quiet environment, and see if a picture of The Infinite doesn’t appear in your mind.

“…but what do they eat?”

Amazon.com to the rescue!

Or something. I can’t imagine what else you’re expected to do with honest-to-god ground-up crickets.

I do not recall how this got in my tabs, but it was too good not to use for something. The morning got complicated, but expect a care package post later.

History doesn’t always repeat itself but it does often rhyme.

First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Irony alert, of course, because the “They” Niemöller goes on about are the Nazis. Not much chance neo-nazis are going to “come for” anybody in any organized way very soon – have you met those rubes? Seriously, they make the KKK look like the editorial board of the National Review in its heyday – but the social justice warriors are taking no chances. According to Brad:

In a similar vein, CloudFlare has removed the Daily Stormer from its service. (Among other functions, they protect websites from DDoS attacks.)

Reversing the company’s previous stance on not censoring content, founder and CEO Matthew Prince wrote in an internal email that he “woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company.”

“My rationale for making this decision was simple: the people behind the Daily Stormer are a**holes and I’d had enough,” Prince wrote. “Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision.”

I had considered subscribing to CloudFlare to protect our web sites, but forget that — I don’t want to lose our web presence because some arrogant CEO woke up in a pissy mood one day. And there you see on naked display the attitude of all the Silicon Valley CEOs: I can kick people around because I’m the CEO of a major Internet firm.

Fortunately nothing at all bad can come of such things – because they’re only happening to nazis, and nobody really disputes that nazis are assholes. I mean, seriously. How is such a depth of historic illiteracy possible, that there are still people eager to call themselves nazis? But we used to say – seems like only a little over a week ago – that the measure of a free society is that it can let such people be as stupid as they like as long as they don’t start hurting people. Now suddenly they’re an existential threat and we must all applaud while our betters release the hounds? Niemöller is screaming from his grave.

And somewhere there’s a mine shaft where a canary has stopped cheeping.

All this flashlight talk has had me thinking about them – like, where did the word “flashlight” come from anyway? The English call them “electric torches,” which is at least more descriptive.

It turns out there’s an answer, related directly to the poor performance of primitive technology.

Early portable electric lights were called “flash lights” since they would not give a long steady stream of light.

Akiba Horowitz, a Russian immigrant who changed his name to Conrad Hubert, was a literal 19^th century rags-to-riches tycoon. He didn’t invent the flashlight but he tinkered with gadgets illuminated with small electric lights and formed the American Electrical Novelty & Manufacturing Company. In the course of all that he hired David Misell, the man who actually did invent the gadget still recognizable as the tubular flashlight, and bought his first patents. Then he put him to work improving it, because apparently the first commercial products were pretty sad. But they were such self-evidently useful tools that they quickly became popular despite their limitations.

Even I remember when flashlights had filament bulbs and drycell batteries that ran out fast, and for that reason were equipped with both constant-on and momentary switches. Because you got better battery life if you “flashed” the light.

I also learned that the American Electrical Novelty & Manufacturing Company is still around, sort of. Guess what it’s called? 🙂

I got to playing around with something last night, since at the moment the Lair sports working examples of the three main types of lightbulb.

I used to use Compact Fluorescent bulbs exclusively, because while LED bulbs with standard sockets existed and pulled like half the wattage, they cost three times as much. That has changed in the eight years of the Lair’s existence, and so now the only 120v CFLs in the cabin are the ones in sockets that just don’t get used much anyway. Spending money unnecessarily is a sin, unless it’s for fun things like alcohol.

But virtually the very first off-grid life lesson I learned upon moving to the gulch, the very first morning when I killed my hosts’ inverter with one, is this:

A demonstration below the fold: Continue reading →

The best thing on the Internet today.

fa and antifa are about as different as dems and repubs. Which is to say you can tell them apart basically only by the flags and certain fringe policy positions.

I’ll say this, though, in favor of MSM suddenly deciding to view nazis with alarm for a while: At least right now they’re hating on people who actually consider themselves fascists. That’s pretty rare, when you think about it.

So wrote George Orwell, and reading his book when I was a kid I never really understood why he pounded away at language so. I was only in it for the story; he was trying to make an important point.

And here it is:

California Proposes Jail Time for Using the Wrong Pronoun for Transgenders

SB 219, titled the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Long-Term Care Facility Resident’s Bill of Rights,” states, “It shall be unlawful for a long-term care facility or facility staff to…. willfully and repeatedly fail to use a resident’s preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns.” It imposes fines and jail time on any long-term care employee who refuses to use transgender pronouns. Fines for repeat offenders could be as high as $1,000 and a jail term of up to a year.

The bill will also mandate bathrooms and rooming situations be designated by gender identity and not biological sex. There are no exemptions for long term care facilities run by religious institutions who integrate their beliefs about gender into their policies and practices.

Reality is a social construct. Which is to say, it is what our would-be rulers say it is.

California. I almost wish I still lived there, only so I could have the pleasure of leaving again. But I swear it seems to have gotten a lot crazier just in the past few years.

Yeah, I got nuttin’ today but my stats page tells me I shouldn’t ignore the blog just because I have nothing constructive to say.

So here’s a random image I stole from the Internet.

…and maybe then I can finish the Lair’s first coat.

There’s the scaffold…

…and there’s the reason I’m not up on the scaffold right now.

I promised to replace the platform in return for the loan of the scaffold. It wasn’t a selfless promise, because I ain’t standing on that ever again. Worried me to death the last time.

So I spent some morning work time making a new one. But since I’m still an acrophobe, I won’t be walking on it till it’s securely bolted to its frame. And that won’t happen till I can buy some bolts, which probably won’t happen till next Monday.

I could start on the lower second coat, but then I’d probably be out of paint again. First I want to put two coats on that upper front part, and get it out of my life for another two or three years.

So for now I’m fiddling with electricity and otherwise not accomplishing much on the addition.

Yeah. You know what else is really expensive? Paint, that’s what. I recall those halcyon days of yesteryear when the Lair didn’t have paintable siding. The winter wind whistled through the walls, true, but I didn’t have to pay for paint, boy. And then there’s that actual painting.

You want to know what the Lair looks like right now? I can show you, because I just this minute went outside and took a picture…

As the sun broke over the ridge at quarter after six, it illuminated this…clearly unfinished site. It has looked like that for three days now. It’s going to go right on looking like that for a few days, too, because Uncle Joel can climb a tall shaky ladder or he can swing a paint pole, but asking him to do both is asking for a demonstration of terror paralysis. So starting this morning we’re moving to a related and contributory task: Refurbishing one of S&L’s old scaffolds. Yes, I know. I hoped to avoid that, but it’s how I got that upper part painted last time and it’ll help me get it painted this time. Unfortunately it’s been sitting outside when not intermittently in use for going on fifteen years now, and the plywood platform is pretty much rotted through. It was pretty damned iffy last time I used it, and that was 2 years ago. So I’m going to build it a new plywood platform. I’ll have to drill out some rivets, and then I’ll have to go to town and get some small bolts to replace the rivets. So even if I finish making the platform this morning I won’t be able to use the scaffold until sometime next week, probably. But that’s life.

And then, when I’m done with that, you know what I get to do? That’s right!

A second coat.

The 12v lighting is coming along nicely, though. And I had a good day yesterday, even though it wasn’t really addition-related.

“Here’s a word about the wonders of eugenics!”

With the rise of prenatal screening tests across Europe and the United States, the number of babies born with Down syndrome has significantly decreased, but few countries have come as close to eradicating Down syndrome births as Iceland.

Since prenatal screening tests were introduced in Iceland in the early 2000s, the vast majority of women — close to 100 percent — who received a positive test for Down syndrome terminated their pregnancy.

And so it has not proven necessary to make it mandatory.

One big problem with non-centralized solar power generating systems is that, while solar panel, inverter and charge controller technology has advanced greatly in the past 20 years, we’re stuck with 100-year-old battery technology. Household deep-cycle batteries are mostly just hugely beefed-up car batteries – they’re enormously heavy, enormously expensive, and have strictly finite lifespans. Unlike everything else in the system, they’re expendable commodities.

This raises a big cost issue with people who have places in the boonies but don’t live there full-time. Their battery costs are as great as those of full-time residents but the expense of new batteries may not be worth it to them.

Which is why, when part-time neighbor TC died, amid the sadness and lost what-if’s an opportunity arose.

TC never got to really develop his property. He had one of those big prefab sheds trucked in, he had a solar power system installed in it, and then he spent two years fighting cancer and I basically never saw him again.

TC died, his son contacted me as caretaker, drove down from out of state to look over the property, and I think he plans to put it up for sale. That could take years, and during those years the solar power components will probably be fine but those already two-year-old batteries will continue to deteriorate.

Meanwhile I have a neighbor whose very expensive battery bank is in the process of giving up the ghost. It must be replaced, but it would cost on the order of $4000 to do a full-on job of it. The property is only used two weekends out of the month tops. Lately, with Monsoon, quite a lot less. A less-expensive alternative would be good.

I’m the caretaker there as well. I won’t cheat either party, but the living are worth more to me than the dead. So I did something I do only very reluctantly: I played middleman. I pointed out the possible opportunity to my neighbor, I explained – but did not overstate – the entropic facts of life to TC’s son. I offered my services as intercessor.

Sums were offered, sums have recently been accepted and will no doubt change hands in due course. And then – oh, my aching back – I’ll be schlepping batteries around. My neighbor got his cheaper alternative, TC’s son got a cash infusion in return for something that he didn’t value and that would otherwise be wasted, and I get goodwill.

Long-time readers know that’s not nothing. I live on goodwill.

…and I swear I wasn’t surfing porn or downloading torrent files or colluding with Russians online, but I did spend part of the afternoon reading news sites and trying to get some handle on that business in Virginia other than “KKK skinhead nazis viciously attacked peaceful anti-fascist flower children with guns and cars and, I dunno, super-aryan powers or something”…

… which I suspect is not entirely what happened but I still don’t know and apparently won’t learn from reading the news. Anyway, that must be where I blew my ration – news sites do seem to suck up bandwidth – or else Verizon is just screwing with me for fun. But I do need to stay the hell away from the internet today. It’s Monday and I hope to go to town for a water run, and otherwise I’ll just be poking around electrical circuitry with iron tools and nothing could possibly go wrong with that. So there’s no point reporting on it, right?

Look! I can still wire the simplest practical circuit!

And that’s not even a permanent light fixture. Big Brother’s sending me another long LED lamp like the one under the kitchen counter, to use as a bed reading lamp. So that switch will be right near the head of the bed, if I’ve figured the wall relationships correctly, but the lamp will move slightly and take a different form. And there are six more 12 volt fixtures that still have to go up; the plan for lighting and a possible future ceiling fan got more and more complicated until there’s just no way I have the wire for it.

The 120v outlets were simple, because the circuit was already in what became the inside wall and there’s no switches. Just a matter of extending new branches. But all the lighting is twelve volts, a completely separate thing. Today’s task was to get voltage into the addition and at least one light shining. That first part was the hard one, because I had to lay out iron conduit, cut it to size and screw it into place all under the Lair’s crawlspace. Many, many things I’d rather do but it was step one. Once wires were poking up in an addition wall, things got much easier.

The lamp wiring will be a relatively gradual thing, since I don’t have enough materials yet. so I expended a switch at the voltage source to keep from having to trek out to the powershed and disconnect batteries.

I don’t know why this is such a big deal to me. The first time I made a bulb light up on the wall of the Lair, that was a big deal. I built the Lair, I built the power generation system, as I recall I even scrounged the light fixture. Put it all together and have light come out of thin air, no power company involved, when you’re never quite certain you know what you’re doing, that’s a big deal. I remember posting the picture of that CFL burning on that wall but I can’t find it now, I was extremely pleased with myself. Hey, if you do all that and don’t take a moment to celebrate, there’s something wrong with you.

That was a long time ago but here I am again, the first light shining in this new room of the now two-room Lair, and if I’m not exactly giddy it still seems like an important milestone.